Couple’s Portrait - 2022

A quick throwaway project from 2022

Once again utilising Black 3.0 from CultureHustle, and some cheap acrylics/canvas, I painted this little picture two weeks after the “Self Portrait”.

I don’t know if grown-ups are “supposed” to have favourite colours, but I do. My favourite has been black since I was 4 (which is also my favourite number). Black, to me, feels misunderstood by many. Smug people tell me it’s “not a colour” but if I asked them what colour this page was, they’re gonna say black. They’re not gonna say “none”.

To me, black is a rich, timeless, versatile colour. One with a lot of depth and beauty. There’s a certain defiance in being rejected as “not a colour”, and yet not only existing amongst the other colours, but being so defining and important that without your existence, all other colour would be garish, washed out clown puke. I love that, and the blackest black I can paint, I will. Black 3.0 - a paint made in the spirit of defiance and seeking that rich depth - was like catnip to me, and I wanted an excuse to use it as much as possible. So, along with painting over my old works, I created this painting to reflect the other side of myself, my life and the times in which I was living in 2022.

Like the colour that dominates it, “Couple’s Portrait” is an easy one to misunderstand. It looks like a lone figure in a void, but it is not.

The black is not the darkness, the black is not a void, the figure is not alone.